The Burning House

I love projects like this, asking people to condense those things most important to them down to a handful of belongings. 

One of the differences between the US and the UK is precisely on this [US] side of the ocean we own our emotions, even the ones of which we are not especially proud.

— Grant McCracken

Roots vs. Mobility and the fight for the American Unconscious

Could it be that Americans are a restless people, a mobile people, never satisfied with where they are as a matter of selection? The pioneers, the immigrants who peopled the continent, were the restless ones in Europe. The steady rooted ones stayed home and are still there. But every one of us, except the Negroes forced here as slaves, are descended from the restless ones, the wayward ones who were not content to stay at home. Wouldn’t it be unusual if we had not inherited this tendency? And the fact is that we have. But that’s the short view. What are roots and how long have we had them? […] Only when agriculture came into practice - and that’s not very long ago in terms of the whole history - did a place achieve meaning and value and permanence. But land is tangible, and tangibles have a way of getting into few hands. Thus it was that one man wanted ownership of land and at the same time wanted servitude because someone had to work it. Roots were in ownership of land, in tangible and immovable possessions. In this view we are a restless species with a very short history of roots, and those not widely distributed. Perhaps we have overrated roots as a psychic need. Maybe the greater the urge, the deeper and more ancient is the need, the will, to be somewhere else. 

Please excuse the long-winded quote. It’s from John Steinbeck’s non-fiction about America, Travels With Charley, first published in 1962, and possibly one of the most eloquently articulated passages about roots and mobility in American culture - as it was at the time. 

Mobility has been a dominant cultural paradigm in American culture for a very long time. It still dominates, to a certain extent. But the pendulum swings the other way, too. The story of mobility, movement and restlessness is instrumental in and perpetuated by some sort of existing power system. Essentially, mobility is a myth. I like myths, they’re fun to pick apart. Steinbeck’s brief but succinct evaluation of mobility and rootedness takes mobility as self-evident. “But OF COURSE we’re a mobile people! And here’s why…” The historical evidence may go a ways to explain why we’re mobile, and why the story of mobility resonates so powerfully with Americans, but why do we keep telling this story, over and over again?

Yeah, it sells cars; and “progress,” the close sibling of “mobility,” promotes status anxiety … but let’s be more intelligent than that. 

Americans are obsessed with mobility, but more and more, they’re (we’re) also obsessed with rootedness, origins, heritage and permanence. Genealogy and family tree services have boomed in the last couple decades. The question “Who do you think you are?” now refers to a question of the past rather than one of potential. For the Great Meritocracy that is the United States, this is quite a development. 

The questions this change throws up are quite significant. Dominant myths usually play some sort of important role, having some purpose in our minds beyond being a nice story to tell. So, if mobility was a dominant myth, what role was it playing? What, in effect, was it covering up, or disavowal was it facilitating? And if mobility was a story that allowed us to ignore some other unconscious component of our national composition, what does a change like this imply? 

First off, I’d argue mobility, or a lack of roots or rootedness, helps Americans unconsciously both create and control a lack of race. There are many, many races populating American soil. But many multiples does not equate a negative singular. Ask anyone what the American “race” is, and you’ll just find blank faces, or perhaps some PC regurgitated muttering about “melting pots” and “multiculturalism”. I’d argue the culturally dominant “race” in America is still caucasian. Or let’s just call it “white”, for now. “White” is a total misnomer, and of course, there are a lot of other contributing influences over the American contemporary gene pool than North-Western, Anglo-Saxon Europe. But most of the “America” portrayed within and outside of the nation’s borders, happens to be played out by “white” people. 

So, simultaneously, we play out our culture as “white” people, but continue to say, “we have no origins, we have no roots, we have no race… we are, in all this hubris, claiming “we’re above race.” “Look at us with our token Black guy in the White House!” Is America a so-called “post-race” nation? Americans are more obsessed with race than virtually any other nation of people. This isn’t to say Americans are racist, but race, in all its dimensions, is almost constantly on the American mind. 

—- With every paragraph, I’m infuriatingly aware I can’t do this topic justice in a single blog post… but I’ll press on. —-

In a quick leap of the unconscious mind, “mobility” connotes “lack of roots.” And if roots imply a sort of racial heritage and origin, mobility essentially facilitates the myth of the post-race nation. We come from no-where and everywhere at the same time. 

But what of rootedness? We suddenly find ourselves wanting to come from somewhere! Mobility has slowed to a near stand-still… both social mobility and physical mobility. Americans have stopped going places (both meanings). Forget travel; this isn’t about travel, this is about where we call “home.” And it seems American culture has cast its collective gaze backward, inward, indeed to its roots. This seems severely at odds with the myth of mobility. Americans have been predominantly united not by where they came from, but the idea of where they’re going. We might have all come from somewhere different, but the journey has brought us together. 

So what happens when “journeys” just stop making sense? We’re just not going any where as a nation, or as a culture. Yes, individuals may still go places, but as a whole we’re collectively slowing to a halt. We’re more grounded, more obsessed than ever with land and property and permanence. We’re more rooted. Social mobility is almost non-existant in reality (though - as a myth - is still pumped out through our media and popular culture). Perhaps we’ve land-grabbed all we could, now we’re just obsessed with hanging onto it. 

What happens now is we start looking for other ways to connect with each other.No longer united by the journey, roots start making a lot more sense. Race, heritage, genealogy, family trees start getting emotionally profitable. 

But as a nation of people relatively ill-equipped to talk about race (for centuries dominated by either overt or latent racism, an un-intended consequence of our surrounding cultures), this throws up all sorts of interesting new artefacts about cultural identity. We’ve been disavowing race (and racism) for generations… it’s not going to be an easy transition. Our roots have always been there, but we’ve tried our best to ignore them. Now, we’re doing our best to ignore the fact mobility just isn’t what it used to be. 

We’ve been going through a period of transition for a couple decades now, we’re much less finding our collective identities through wild-west cowboys and road trips (what remain are of the world of parody and absurd comedy); and far more looking for America in our heritage. As we become less-connected to some imagined genetic “purity” the more important that imagined lineage becomes in our collective unconscious. 

I fear some Americans will (and do) take this cultural shift as an excuse for latent racism to become overt. 

Humans, as social animals, will always look for connection, even if connection comes at the expense of division - because we’re also tribal. 

At the risk of this becoming a book… and because I can’t do this topic justice, I’m going to stop. 

Image via i.klee

Batmobile: invisibility for the masses

Something interesting has been going on in the world of car colours. I’ve noticed several cars in the last few weeks with matte black paint jobs. The kind of black that disappears in the dark. Light doesn’t reflect off it. Nothing shines. It looks a bit fuzzy; soft, even. It’s a bit like chalk-board black.

This matte look has extreme militaristic connotations. Its indefinability is like that of a warship’s grey, or a stealth bomber’s black. The relationship between auto design and jets is nothing new, with many car designs throughout the last 60 years directly referencing the aerodynamic, flight-specific shapes of air and space-travel. 

I’m not exactly well-versed in the world of auto trends, but this matte black seems like quite a departure from car paint trends of recent years. It’s not just a colour change, it’s a textural, material change. Cars have typically been on a mission to look more aerodynamic, more sleek. Every curve designed to reflect light in a way to look like it’s “in motion”. But here, now, is a car that has rock-like qualities. Designed to both absorb and blend into its urban surroundings (specifically urban because I’ve only seen this on a handful of BMWs, one sport utility BMW and a 3 Series sedan, and a GT sedan), less a beacon of motion, more so a moment of dissolve, blur and invisibility. 

This is probably a dramatic next stage manifestation of the trend for grey cars… utilizing texture and what are likely new paint technologies to achieve a visual quality desired but unattained by conventional grey. Grey signaled invisibility in an urban environment. It was subtle. It was austere. 

Matte black makes cars almost invisible. Invisibility is a shield, both physically and emotionally - in this case, more emotionally. Signaling an implicit need for emotional security over physical security. Though counter-intuitively, this matte black is much harder to see in traffic. Are cars so safe now they don’t need to look safe? Is emotional safety derived from not-being-seen more important than the physical safety of being-seen?

It also signals an extreme masculine subjectivity in the form of optic control. The driver of the matte black vehicle is in a position of visual power compared to his surrounding (non-matte driving) people. He can see, but isn’t seen. 

Oddly, this isn’t just a trend in cars. It’s also cropping up in bicycle paint jobs too. Somehow, the stillness, silence and fuzz of matte has replaced the false motion of shiny paint. It’s more masculine, harder-looking, safer-feeling, and exactly the opposite of almost everything else on the road. 

Update: I wonder how much this has to do with comic book illustration style? 

Brave girls

After last week’s revelations about the Japanese man who donned a wetsuit in the middle of the tsunami’s destruction to swim out and rescue is wife and mother, I’ve been thinking a lot about bravery. 

Bravery is experienced almost universally across cultures. In most, it’s a highly gendered characteristic, celebrated chiefly as a sign of masculinity. It’s an outward show of virility and potential success. Most cultures distinguish between risk-taking and bravery although often reward them in the same way when done successfully. 

Though this post isn’t about bravery in general, it’s an observation that unlike in the US - where bravery is embraced and rewarded in the same way for men and women alike, in the UK, bravery is a strictly male thing. Women and girls are actively discouraged (it seems) from being brave. This bothers me. 

Two weeks ago, I spent my Sunday with a wonderful new friend, 6 year-old Maddy, and her brother and father, standing by the side of a road handing out water bottles to bike racers in the Wally Gimber. Having 3 brothers and awesome parents, I’m pretty sure Maddy is going to grow up to be an amazing girl, full of gumption and gall, maybe become a bike racer like her dad, or a successful attorney or writer or astronaut. Mostly because it’s quite difficult to impart wisdom to boys about being brave (as is their cultural rite as boys in England) without some of it rubbing off on her. 

Encouraging bravery is necessary if you’re trying to promote self-confidence because it’s all about believing in yourself, regardless the outcome. 

I don’t have too many gripes about English culture, mostly just amused observations about its quirks. But the English discouragement of female bravery is fundamentally horrible. It turns us into a culture of co-dependent, self-depricating, shy and (sadly) often un-interesting individuals who would rather be glamour models than business women. (I pray this isn’t the fate of little Maddy).

Female bravery is looked down upon because it means standing out from the crowd. (Humiliation is fine if it happens en masse, but unbearable if it happens to you all alone). English women like to make mistakes in large groups (note the monstrous occasion that is the English “hen-do”), and they don’t mind looking the fool, but looking the fool in the promotion of one’s personal or professional success means looking ambitious (and there is little less English than appearing to try hard). Bravery requires enthusiasm and caring. The English might be good-humoured, but (see my previous point), enthusiasm and keen-ness is hard to swallow for a culture that invented “cool” (not caring). 

That being said, I know a few amazing, keen, very brave English women. I raced with and against some of them yesterday. 

England needs brave girls. It needs to promote a culture of bravery, regardless of gender. Bravery breeds intelligence, self-confidence, independence and ambition. Where are our role models who can displace the glamour models? I’ll puke if I see another female olympic athlete pose nude for some boy mag. Don’t turn our bravery into just another way of producing a beautiful body. Acts of bravery can be small. They can mean letting us make mistakes. Let us learn how to fail, for failure (as most the big British business minds will tell you) is the the currency of success. Let us not be perfect, for perfection sows the seeds of doubt. Let us race against the boys. Let us do things alone. Let us not compromise ourselves or what we believe in. Let us not be afraid our bravery will signal some sort of un-femininity. 

In our marketing, can we learn to celebrate our desire to be brave? English girls are in shackles, wanting to be brave, but up against a culture which doesn’t let them. Which brand is going to realise this first? 

Double Story

I’ve recently been re-watching the Wire (to get through the winter training season on my turbo - known as an ‘indoor bike’ to the normal world), and one particular narrative trope keeps coming back: the double story. I feel like I’ve seen this a lot lately, not just on the Wire, or even just on TV, but everywhere. 

A double story is essentially a long-winded parallel story, replicating characters, even lines. The most obvious is often found in visual montages, where - for dramatic effect - the double stories will be juxtaposed cutting from one back to the other. It seems, particularly in the Wire, this double story is the big narrative that runs throughout the series, coming to a climactic head a various junctures when the two stories get closer and closer to one another and then in one dramatic montage are, quite literally, visually spliced together again. We’ve all seen these double stories… it’s nothing particularly new. 

But why are we telling these double stories? They seem to be one defining characteristic of most successful television programmes these days.

Double stories make people feel intelligent because they confuse us, forcing our minds to read a narrative for connections. We unintentionally start thinking more laterally when we watch double stories. It becomes difficult to clearly delineate good vs. bad and other such comforting facts because every character archetype has both two versions. Neither one is easily defined because they essentially act out the exact same story. 

I’m a little ashamed to say it took me a second watch of the Wire to be able to articulate that this is the show’s big narrative. The beauty of a double story is that it works on very very simple levels (like Black guy/White guy) as well as nuanced, complex levels. No audience member left behind! 

We’re not just talking about so-called ‘complex characters’; in fact, the characters aren’t exactly complex. But we read them as such because each character is in fact two characters, acting out the same narrative in parallel. The double story trope weaves two separate entities into one, enabling a narrative to feel more complex than it actually is. We feel conflicted because our minds are forced to reckon with one idea in two separate ways, at the same time. 

Perhaps this double story is working out some sort of zeitgeisty social schizophrenia. I’m not entirely sure, but I reckon we like to think of ourselves as complex individuals, but the double story seems to identify that we actually like to think of ourselves as complex multiples. The ability to be one thing and also be something else entirely different simultaneously seems to be a uniquely 21st century phenomenon. 

Double stories don’t just happen in TV and cinema, though. I’d like to see more of this employed within exhibition practices, in particular…. perhaps where it’s most necessary to tell a complex idea. 

The trick of the double story is that it has ‘multiple entry points’… or something. There are lots of ways to find a first connection with a character or singular idea within a double story. They provide lots of options (“which is more me?”) and then only once you’ve identified the most relatable entry point and have become immersed in the narrative, do you realise how conflicted you’ve become. But by that point you’re hooked and feel the need to embrace the complexity. 

Double stories make lateral thinkers of us all… and that’s quite nice. 

Image via TrendTablet

Why do we panic?

Panic, as a state of emotion, is one that is at its most valuable when it is shared. A person who is panicking needs to express his anxiety, his hysteria. 

Public hysteria is what follows shock at the onset of a massive, spectacular disaster like what was just witnessed in Japan. First an enormous earthquake. Then a tsunami watched live on TV around the world as it spread its lethal waters for miles inland. Then a weakened nuclear reactor plant fails and explodes. It’s fucking horrific. And I haven’t even mentioned the tens of thousands of people who’ve died and even more injured as a result. 

Hysteria is actually quite a derogatory word, and one that has fallen out of public media parlance in recent years because of its connotations with sexism. Yeah, that’s right. Sexism. Hysteria was originally the word used to describe the psychological situation of a woman when “her uterus was out of place”. We’re talking about the ‘science’ of hundreds of years ago. So, let’s re-cap: a woman’s uterus starts wandering around her body; clearly that’s why she’s mad. And by ‘mad’, it might mean she’s just being a bit inconvenient for someone. So I’m going to use this word with caution.

But in some ways, the use of the word ‘hysteria’ is somewhat apt here. It’s a kind of raw, emotional panic that seems unstoppable. But it’s also often “caused” by a load of nonsense if you look at the situation rationally. Hysteric panic is self-perpetuating because people like to share their panic. Panic is a dish best shared between friends. Even better, though, when it’s shared between relative strangers. 

Panic lives in the same emotional register as ecstasy or glee. Especially when and because it’s experienced with others. There’s a fantastic book by Barbara Ehrenreich called Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. In it, she discusses the need for public out-pouring of emotion. Mardi Gras, Carnival, parades, street dances, barn dances, you name it… people love coming together for no particular reason beyond the ability to share in an emotional experience with one another. Usually, and thankfully, this seems to happen around positive emotions. But we live in such emotionally addled societies these days… all work and no play (and our play often happening in isolation)… and we take ourselves so damn seriously! Perhaps what we need more than anything is to share an emotion. It doesn’t even matter which one it is. 

Panic lives in the same emotional space with ecstasy and glee because it’s something we almost physiologically feel the need to share with others. Especially with strangers. Panic unites people. It gives them a reason to connect… more simply, a reason (an excuse?) just to talk. 

So, back to Japan. A lot of people are panicking. But really, the news media are manufacturing this panic. They know it will get people talking. And what gets people clicking links, buying shit and turning to God? Yep. That’s right. Word of mouth. 

Most of what is being said and written in the news is highly sensationalist and inaccurate at the best of times. We should know better, but we don’t. We should do our research. We should listen to the scientists, not the journalists. So many shoulds… but we too-strongly crave the opportunity to connect with others to think rationally about how or why we’re doing it. 

This is not to discount the very real and horrific tragedy of what’s going on in Japan. It’s awful. But let’s at least think about why we’re panicking before we run for the hills.